The holiday season is here. And we’re ready to help you get into the holiday spirit with some creative Christmas real estate ideas to warm up your holidays. From social media campaigns to networking events to sending postcards, we’ve got you covered.
As your real estate business slows down, it’s the perfect opportunity to put a little extra time and effort into your marketing to jump-start your business in 2023.
But we didn’t stop there. We want to spread the feeling of the season, so we created some fully customizable door hanger templates and real estate Christmas cards in Canva for you to use in your joy-filled marketing cheer.
Download Your Holiday Canva Card Templates
17 Christmas Real Estate Ideas to Get More Clients
1. Holiday Tour of Homes
Put together a small tour of homes that you can hold open while decorated for the season. This is particularly lovely when you do it in the early evening when the Christmas lights are on. It’s practically magical. You don’t need a lot of homes for this (around three works well) and you can hold each home open just like a tour or caravan.
Serve some hors d’oeuvres and mulled wine to keep everyone warm and happy. Print out a brochure featuring all the homes on the tour. This works well with an open house, as well. But a small tour of homes from the same brokerage pushes that credibility factor through the chimney.
Promote your tour of homes on all your social media channels easily with AgentCrate. They offer hundreds of gorgeous, easy-to-edit templates for everything from door hangers, to social media posts, to email templates.
2. Hand Out Turkeys or Hams (or Pies)
This is a great gift for past clients. For every home you closed this year, purchase a ham or turkey and hand-deliver them to each client. Dress it up with a nice Christmas card, and don’t forget to schedule some extra time to chit-chat when you deliver these gifts because your people will definitely want to visit for a bit when you show up with this gift.
This year is an especially great time to arrive with a ham or turkey, the central part of any family dinner. With inflation pushing grocery prices through the roof, your gift will seem especially thoughtful.
If dessert is more your thing, try delivering pies to your people instead. But the secret to this gift is the personal delivery. Don’t skimp and have it delivered. You need to go to their home in person to deliver the gift. You’ll instantly shoot to the top of everyone’s minds through the rest of the year.
3. Adopt a Family for Christmas
The holidays are a great time to help those less fortunate. Work with a local church organization, The Salvation Army, or a veterans organization to support a family in need. Ask your sphere to help contribute either with toys, non-perishable foods, or money.
Promote your adopt-a-family drive through all channels—social media, postcards to your farm and past clients, phone calls, and even door-knocking. You can do a lot of good in your community while making a lot of connections with your people.
A cool way to promote your drive is to create a website that shares information about the event, gives directions on how to connect with you, and includes a lead capture feature that allows you to continue reaching out to them after the event concludes. Canva now has single-use landing pages and website templates available on their site.
4. Sponsor a Toy Drive
Similar to adopting a family, you can reach out to your entire community with a toy drive, asking for toy donations for families and children in need. You can work with a local church organization, The Salvation Army, Toys for Tots, or even a local women’s shelter.
Promote your toy drive to your community through social media, postcards, door hangers, and reaching out to your sphere. You can even go on local shows or podcasts to talk about your toy drive. Show up to your Chamber of Commerce monthly meeting and let everyone in your community know about it.
5. Send Recipe Postcards
I love the idea of sending out postcards to your farm that include something useful. If your postcard is useful, it’s less likely to end up in the circular file. I found these postcards on Zazzle.com with one of my favorite recipes already printed on them.
But Zazzle has several preprinted recipes for desserts, side dishes, and additional cocktail options that are sure to fit your personality. Find something that fits who you are and share it with your farm, past clients, and even some favorite vendors in your community.
6. Send Out Christmas Cards to Past Clients
It’s a shame how few people still send out Christmas cards anymore. But think of how much you’ll stand out when your handwritten real estate Christmas cards arrive. Spend a little time doing a few each day instead of trying to do them all at once and you’ll be able to get them done much easier. And when your people receive your beautiful card with your handwritten thoughts inside, you’ll make a major impression that will last well into the new year.
We wanted to make this easy for you, so we created a few real estate Christmas card templates in Canva. You can customize them any way you like and then print them out. You still have time to get them in the mail before the season is over.
7. Host a Holiday Party With Vendors
This one takes a little planning but it’s well worth the effort. Organize a Christmas party for a couple of hundred people. You should make this a team or brokerage event where all agents invite their past and current clients, favorite vendors, sphere, and family members.
Get sponsors for the event to cover costs for renting a venue, food, cocktails, and plenty of prizes to give away. Send out invitations and include the sponsors’ logos. In this relaxed and fun atmosphere, you don’t have to be a pushy salesperson. Just have conversations with as many people as you can and enjoy the merriment.
8. Holiday Door Hangers
You can easily take a couple of afternoons and hit up your farm area with some festive door hangers. They act like real estate Christmas cards and remind everyone that you’re the real estate professional who knows their neighborhood. It’s a nice touch that will make you look like the Realtor® who cares about the community.
And we’ve made this one easy for you. We’ve created some stunning Christmas door hangers that you can customize in Canva. Add your information and customize it with your colors. You can easily have them printed in time to get out there in your community and spread some holiday cheer.
Get Christmas door hanger Canva templates
9. Throw Your Buyers a Holiday Housewarming & Invite Their New Neighbors
Just sold a house? Throw your buyers a housewarming party! Use one of the door hanger templates and create invitations that you can take to the neighbors. Tell them they have a new neighbor and you’re throwing a housewarming party. Make sure you include the date and time to attend.
Let your buyers know that you’re doing this for them and make sure they feel comfortable with the idea. You might need to give your clients a week or so to get in the house before the housewarming party so they can organize and unpack first. Once you’ve nailed down the date, provide food, drinks, and anything else you need to make this party a success.
Do some door-knocking a day or two before to make sure everyone got their invitation. Take a few extra along with you just in case anyone says they didn’t get it. Let everyone know about the party.
When it’s time for the event, make sure to have everyone sign a guest list so your clients will know who attended and you’ll be able to follow up with each of them with a nice thank-you card. During the party, be sure to have a lot of conversations with the guests.
10. Host a Christmas Market – Invite Local Vendors
When I lived in Germany, I always looked forward to the vendor markets around Christmas time. There were always so many gifted, crafty people who created beautiful things. There was plenty of great food, ornaments, art, and household items that made great gifts.
You can start a tradition in your community by organizing an annual Christmas market. Invite vendors to participate in this event where they sign up (for a small fee, if necessary) to have a spot with a table to sell their wares. You might be able to find local vendors on Facebook Marketplace that would like to participate in a live event.
Make sure you have your own booth or table at the event. You can couple other marketing ideas like your adopt a family or toy drive, and some fun giveaways at your booth. But don’t forget to have a stack of business cards to hand out to people after you have all those conversations at your event.
11. Host a Charity Fundraising Event
Here’s another idea you can use at a vendor event like the Christmas market—sell baked goods as a fundraiser for a charity. Have your agents bake some muffins, cookies, cake, candies, or anything festive. Get some gorgeous packaging to make these baked goods look extra beautiful for the season.
Make sure to promote your fundraiser to all the same channels, letting your people know the cause or charity you’re raising money for. Pairing this event with a vendor market or even your holiday tour of homes will give you a talking point to start a conversation with just about anyone.
12. Host a Christmas Meal for Charity
This could be a really fun way to make a positive dent in your community. You can do this by working with a local restaurant or by having other people prepare dishes. The way it works is you promote a holiday feast and invite everyone in your town to join for free. Serve by the plate or make it buffet-style—that’s completely up to you. The food is free to everyone with a suggested donation to the charity you’re raising money for.
It’s a lovely way to promote community, enjoy a wonderful holiday meal, make connections to people in your area, and raise money for a charity you support. You can follow up with an announcement of how much money you raised.
13. Join a Christmas Parade
When your town organizes its annual Christmas parade, make sure not to miss it. You don’t have to put together a float. You can prepare some marketing materials, like your real estate Christmas cards, and hand them out while walking in the parade. It’s an easy way to get out in front of people, smile, and spread goodwill in your community.
14. Slydial Christmas Voice Message
A great way to put an instant smile on anyone’s face is to leave them a Christmas voicemail message. And you can pair this marketing strategy with any of the previously mentioned methods. You can use this method to promote your other marketing events. Invite people to the holiday party you’re hosting or invite them to donate a toy for the toy drive. Don’t forget to wish them joy this holiday season. Slydial allows you to record one message and send it out to your entire list simultaneously. So, not only does it spread Christmas cheer, but it also saves you tons of time.
15. BombBomb Video Christmas Message
Take your Christmas well wishes up a notch with a video message instead. Use BombBomb to send a prerecorded video out to your entire network at one time. A video takes your holiday message to the next level. Using video makes your message personal, warm, and extra special. Be sure to let your people know about your other events in your video.
16. Cookie Exchange Party With Clients & Past Clients
Who doesn’t love a good cookie exchange party? You get to meet up with friends and walk away with tons of different cookies you didn’t have to bake yourself. Invite your friends, family, past clients, and even your vendors, and have everyone bring at least a dozen cookies.
Everyone at your party will get to choose cookies to take home with them. But in the meantime, you’ll have so much face time with your people where you can make those connections, start conversations, and remind everyone that you’re in real estate.
17. Create a Holiday Display Guide for Your Community
This is a needed guide every year. People want to see the Christmas light displays but may not know how to find the best ones. You can put together a Christmas display guide and send it out to your network. Email it to your existing database. Then post it in your social media channels as a free download (don’t forget to ask for their email address so you can send it to them). You can add those people to your database and keep in touch with them throughout the year.
Your Take on Christmas Real Estate Ideas
We at The Close love the holiday season and the many opportunities to connect with new people and reconnect with people we haven’t seen in a while. We all get busy throughout the year, and it’s a challenge to stay in touch with everyone. The holidays give us a chance to slow down, laugh, and enjoy this special time of the year.
I hope these Christmas real estate ideas encourage and inspire you to look for ways to get out into your community, be seen, start authentic conversations, and see where things take you. Be excited for the coming year and all that awaits you. Real estate is nothing if not an adventure, and we’re excited to see what 2023 brings.
Do you have a fabulous Christmas real estate idea you want to share with us? I would LOVE to hear your creative ideas. Jot them down in the comments below.
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